And A Blue Blanket
by scarlettHuntress
Summary: Cloud, Zack's four-year-old adopted son, is babysat by Sephiroth. Of course, as it's Zack we're talking about, Sephiroth had no idea he was babysitting or even who Cloud WAS until when both turned up at his door this morning. Headache? unavoidable.


Note numero uno: I know nothing about kids. Excuse me.

Note numero duo: I don't know if issues are going to arise over this, but I'm Australian. We say 'Mum' here. 'Mom' never did make sense to me... doesn't sound like it's pronounced.

100 kiriban fic for MIX (snagged by Renkin-Chan)

Request: AU, Zack somehow manages to get Sephiroth to babysit a two-year-old Cloud. Sephiroth... ...well, you'll see.

100 Kiriban Fic:

(Title/s)

...And A Blue Blanket/Family Matters/Sleeping Soundly/A Touch of Confusion.

-

Sephiroth rose at the doorbell's toll, eyeing the door in confusion. He didn't get many visitors- even the women that constantly stalked him didn't have the gall to come to his door- the types in his (sadly, rapidly growing) 'fan club' were either secretaries that offered indecent propositions along with coffee, or the shyer (and he really didn't know which was worse) women that instead (and constantly) obsessed from afar over his sharp, handsome features and amazing silver tresses.

And since he wasn't expecting anything, he didn't have any acquaintances close enough to consider an uninvited house visit and no family that cared enough to visit that meant the person at his door had to be-

"Zack."

His longtime friend (and only close one, much to the chagrin of both men, for entirely different reasons) grinned up at him, but Sephiroth's face was drawn to the blonde fluff ball the man supported against the side of his waist, wrapped in a blue blanked.

Plumes of ..._feathers?_ stuck up in all directions, like a ...

_Chocobo?_

Torn between inquiring as to what exactly the thing was or what Zack was planning on doing with the chocobo thing at his doorstep, Sephiroth nonetheless opened his mouth, determined to ask _any_ question, just in time to be interrupted by Zack.

"Heeya Seph! Listen, I kinda need you to look after him for a second-"

"Zack?" Sephiroth eyed 'him' with no small amount of confusion.

"Guess I should explain, huh. Well, he's my ...someone's -anyway, kid, and I sorta need you to look after him for me," Zack chattered on, oblivious to the dawning horror on Sephiroth's face. He passed the downy bundle to the older man, kicking a bulging yellow bag past the threshold.

"Well anyway, Seph meet Cloud- Cloud meet Seph. I'll be back at 5- Ring me if there's any problems- Wait, don't ring me! Seeya!"

Zack grinned and then vanished, leaving Sephiroth unsure to what exactly had transpired. He somehow refrained from making a noise similar to a 'huh?' which, as unfitting he felt the word was in the English language, was how he felt presently.

In his arms, the blonde fluff ball stirred.

"Zack called you... Cloud?" he asked the lump. "You don't look like much of a cloud kind, more of a chocobo kind." he told it, not unkindly.

Slowly, the top of the lump rose- a face appearing underneath the radical hairstyle like some strange jack-in-a-box.

Smooth slightly pink skin covered a pudgy face, and framed now slowly opening bright blue eyes.

"A toddler," Sephiroth murmured- perhaps to himself, perhaps to Cloud- disbelief almost choking him. "Zack gave me a _toddler_."

He refrained on swearing. He was very good at that- swearing was what other, less in control people, did in bad, or even good situations. However, the next couple of seconds tempted him.

The bright blue eyes swung like a magnet to Sephiroth- the man felt almost pinned by the gaze, stuck as Cloud uttered the one word that turned Sephiroth's predicament into the metaphorical cherry on top of a steaming pile of holy-Gaea- _ZACK_, what have you gotten me into _now_?

Cloud's hair sweetly framed his face- well, stuck everywhere, but at least some of it framed some part of his face- and the blue eyes now fixed on Sephiroth made the blonde look like a fluffy little angel, minus, of course, the wings, but Sephiroth eyed him with a horror worthy of only the devil.

"What... what did you just say?"

"...mummy?"

_Oh no._

_Oh, Gaea, no!_

Sephiroth attempted to hold the child at arm's length, but a sharp yank at his scalp stopped him in his tracks.

"Ouch..."

Wound around pudgy fingers was a substantial amount of hair.

_His _hair.

_Oh hell no!_

"Not the hair, child. Let go." Sephiroth growled. This was the voice that commanded thousands of people, the voice that had toppled a nation!

The boy ignored him.

Sephiroth sighed. "Cloud, let go."

Yet again ignored. Was he losing his touch?

"Cloud," Sephiroth said sharply. The boy's eyes were on him, at least. He took in a breath, slowly. _I'm never going to respect myself again. Never ever. _"M..." he almost whimpered._ Almost._ "...Mummy wants you to let go."

At last pudgy fingers loosened. Quick as a flash, Sephiroth unwound his shining locks from the cat's cradle of the boy's fingers. Finishing that speed and accuracy with a speed-knitter would kill for, he plunked the kid down quickly on his kitchen counter, snagging the home phone on the way.

With one hand on top of Cloud's soft head, stilling the blonde from whatever destruction he could cause up there, he punched Zack's number into the PHS interface.

Ring Ring.

Sephiroth glowered at the object. _Zack, pick up!_

Ring RIng.

Sephiroth, phone pressed to one ear, guided Cloud's inquisitive hands from a pile of unopened letters.

Ring Ring.

Cloud instead extended a small hand in the direction of Sephiroth's pretty (Don't let him hear you say that) hair.

Ring Ring.

"Mummy?"

"Not mummy." he growled, frustrated at the world, everyone in it but most of all LOUSY FRIENDS THAT DON'T ANSWER PHONE CALLS.

"Can I have it?" Cloud asked, stretching as far as he could.

Ring Ring.

"Have what?"

"Shiny blanky."

Ring Ri-

"Its hair, child, you can't have it."

"What? I don't want your hair!" came a confused voice.

"Zack?" Sephiroth turned his attention back to the PHS. "Listen, you need to come back here and take this child back!"

"...Why?" genuinely confused. Zack was officially a grade-A dumbass.

"I can't look after him!"

"Why not?" Zack whined. "You're not doing anything today!"

"I can't look after children, Zack," Sephiroth growled again.

"C'mon! It's easy! Just look after him 'till five! Or maybe seven."

"Zack, its TEN A.M." Sephiroth interjected angrily, noting he was being ignored, as per se.

"He'll tell you if he's hungry, or if he needs to go to the toilet, okay?"

"Whose is he, Zack?" Sephiroth demanded.

"Dunno!" the man's cheerful voice came back. "He was abandoned a while ago. I adopted him, last week, so he's mine now, I guess!"

"Anyway, I'm over here with Aeris tryin' to see if she'll be his mummy, if you know what I mean," a feminine giggle floated down the line before Zack terminated the call.

_But Aeris can't be his mummy, I a- oh. I'm... not going there._

Sephiroth stared at the useless PHS.

"Gaea curse it- ow!"

He glared at the child. "Cloud, take my hair out of your mouth... now!"

"..."

"... For mummy?"

-----

Sephiroth checked the clock with a sigh. 2:00. More than halfway there.

He'd managed to entertain Cloud for the past four hours with TV, and, when he bored of that for the time being (three hours of TV is more than most children's attention span, which was a pity for the General) the wriggling finger movement he had managed to pick up off his airhead secretaries (Unfortunately for the man, Cloud seemed more entertained with the sparkling lengths of his hair, but Sephiroth had enough common sense to not tempt Cloud with his hair if he valued it). Cloud had needed to 'toilet' twice already, and both were thankfully not the disaster they had the potential to be.

Now Cloud was sitting on his lap to reach the dinner tabletop, where Sephiroth had scrounged up some crayons (why had he had them, anyway?) and photocopy paper for the child. Cloud was busying himself with drawing indistinguishable blobs, as the General saw them.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he pointed a slim finger at a green triangle. "What's that, Cloud?"

The child stared back at him for a moment. "'s tree,"

Sephiroth blinked. "It... doesn't look much like a tree..."

"Here..." he snagged a piece of paper and the green crayon."I'll draw you what a tree looks like."

"I know what tree look like, mummy," Cloud told him, carefully writing 'T R E E' in large, messy block letters under his creation. "See, 's tree,"

"Cloud... trees look like..." Sephiroth stared at the crayon in his hand. He'd never even considered drawing before, but it should be easy, shouldn't it? I mean, you just draw what a tree looks like! But the thing on his page made Cloud's tree look like a Da Vinci piece. "...Uh... one second."

Picking up a brown, Sephiroth stared at the page. A tree... _so you have the trunk_- he drew that at the bottom of the page, just the outline of a branched tree. It was simple enough, but although it looked like a tree it didn't look _real. _But, he thought as he added a green afro to the tree, _as long as Cloud knows that... what exactly am I trying to prove, anyway?_

'Tree' was added in his neat cursive to the side of the tree. Cloud craned his head to look. "'s tree, mummy! But I dunno what th' is..." he said, about Sephiroth's writing. He'd never seen cursive before.

"It says the same thing as you wrote, Cl- what's that?" he inquired, spying another picture under Cloud's arms. The boy handed it to him.

"Uh..." Sephiroth studied the picture. "Is this meant to be me, Cloud?"

"You, mummy, 'N me, 'N daddy!" Cloud explained, pointing to the silver-tipped blob, the black-tipped blob and the yellow-tipped, shorter blob between the two. Were they holding hands?

"You gave me breasts, Cloud..." Sephiroth breathed in horror.

"The other mummies have boobies, Mummy." Cloud told him, matter-of-factly.

Sephiroth felt a headache coming on. "I'm not... not your mummy. I'm Sephiroth."

"Sefer?"

"Sef-e-roth"

"Sef."

Sephiroth sighed. "Yeah, Cloud, Seph." _Great, now _two_ children are going to be calling me that._

"Mu- Sef, 'm tired."

"C'mon, then..." Sephiroth picked him up, and took him into the lounge again, laying him down on the couch. As he went to stand up, Cloud reached up for him.

"Wait- Sef, dn't leave me..." _Cloud was abandoned, Zack said._

"I won't leave you, Cloud." Sephiroth reassured, again making to stand up. The boy gave him the saddest, most mournful look he'd seen in a long time. "I promise..."

"Stay," the boy insisted. Sephiroth sighed.

_Not gonna give up, huh Cloud? Guess I have no choice._

"Move over," he told the child, lying down on the couch. Cloud instantly made space for him, then cuddled up to him once they were both settled.

"Night, Sef. Night, mummy," Cloud murmured, before his eyes slid shut.

"Goodnight, Cloud."

-----

"Damnit, did he _move _the damned steps?" growled Zack, somehow stumped by Sephiroth's front door garden. He finally managed to drag himself up to the door, and fished out Sephiroth's spare keys. Of course, the General wasn't supposed to know Zack had it, but knowing the man he probably knew regardless.

Sneaking in though the hall, Zack braced himself for the wrath of the man. It was late. Really, really late. Well, not as late as seven, but he'd left Cloud with Sephiroth for so long! He trusted the man with his life, but he knew how detached from society the other man had made himself. It was juust enough to make you worri-

Zack stopped, and grinned.

He'd been worried?

Worried about the two now curled peacefully up on the couch, blue blanket and silver hair wrapped around both?

Hell, the only thing he had to worry about was finding a camera before Sephiroth, a notoriously light sleeper, woke up (and hell, Zack was surprised the man hadn't yet).

As Zack ran off on a scavenger hunt, one bright green eye slowly opened. Sephiroth may have forgiven Cloud for calling him 'mummy', and maybe he hadn't _quite _minded babysitting as much as he thought he would, but Zack would not be forgiven.

-----

End- finished 15-02-08 9:23 am UST 8

Anyway, Renkin-Chan, I sincerely hope you're happy with this- it's certainly outside of my 'area', but still I don't feel too bad about it!

Anyone else reading: Congrats for getting through the madness, why not leave a review to let others know of your great task? Or, if you liked it, or hated it, or didn't care, review anyways, why doncha :D.


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